Are you ready for some bad taste? (the selling of the DC Mall)

[Catt03]

Some bureaucrat whose thinking cap had blown off authorized lending the once-solemn, or at least dignified, Mall to this very raucous and very commercial event. The show was a collaboration between the NFL, apparently trying to lure younger viewers to football, and, as the announcer said, “New Pepsi Vanilla and Diet Pepsi Vanilla, the Not-So-Vanilla Vanilla.”

snip

THE EVENT WAS deemed so auspicious that George W. Bush took yet more time off from fighting the war on terrorism to appear, via videotape, at the end of the concert and just before the game, in the manner of a TV huckster. He tried to make some connection between football and “the spirit that guides the brave men and women” of the military, much as the concert had done.

snip

While the sun still shone, the beautiful U.S. Capitol provided an unlikely and, it seemed, reluctant backdrop for the acts. When night came, and the dome was lit up, it appeared to recede a bit into the distance, as if in shame.
Perhaps the Mall will be available now to every American for weddings, birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. No, probably not. You’ll have to be a giant corporation to take over this precious public space and, in effect, spill a ton of garbage all over it.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/962368.asp?0cv=CB20

------------------------------------------------------

This is truly pathetic. How can this be allowed to take place? What happened to common sense in this administration?

[demnan]

1. I remember a very poignant moment on the Mall

I worked a block away and just happened to walk up and take an hour at lunch to see it.

The Aids quilt was laid out square by loving square over vast acres of the mall. I walked around it with tears in my eyes, the love that was in every stitch of that quilt was overwhelming.

The personalities of the people who had died were lovingly remembered. No one could see that and not be affected.

Horrible that they are making the Mall into a shallow money making endeavor, it was a sacred place on that day.

[wryter2000]

2. I'm getting ready to write a letter

To ABC sports,

Congratulations, assholes. You screwed up one of the most solemn places in the United States of America with your gawdy pre-game party. I'm speaking, of course, of the Mall in our nation's capital. The one overlooked by the Lincoln and Washington Memorials. Are you aware that other groups have been denied permission to sell t-shirts of their events there in order to maintain the integrity of this historic landmark? Yet, you could clutter it up with Pepsi. Disgusting.

Perhaps worse, you allowed to introduce the game a man whose immoral and unjustified war has cost the lives of almost 300 of America's young fighting men and women and untold thousands or Iraqis. In the meantime at home, he's managed to put millions of Americans out of work.

I suggest next year you have your opening game at the Vikings' home stadium and throw a free party for the 71,000 Minnesotans whom George W. Bush has rendered unemployed.

Sincerely.

(I won't say "assholes" and screwed. But this letter has been brewing in the back of my mind all day. Thanks for giving me the impetus to write it down.)